Donna Tartt

Richard Papen had never been to New England before his nineteenth year. Then he arrived at Hampden College and quickly became seduced by the sweet, dark rhythms of campus life – in particular by an elite group of five students, Greek scholars, worldly, self-assured, and at first glance, highly unapproachable.

The Secret History 

misha.

‘Murder is pollution. The murderer defiles everyone he comes in contact with. And the only way to purify blood is through blood. 

Truly deserving of the accolade Modern Classic, Donna Tartt's cult bestseller The Secret History is a remarkable achievement - both compelling and elegant, dramatic and playful.'A haunting, compelling and brilliant piece of fiction' The Times'So irresistible and seductive it's almost a guilty pleasure' GuardianUnder the influence of their charismatic classics professor, a group of clever, eccentric misfits at an elite New England college discover a way of thinking and living that is a world away from the humdrum existence of their contemporaries. But when they go beyond the boundaries of normal morality their lives are changed profoundly and for ever.'Enthralling . . . image the plot of Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment crossed with the story of Euripides' Bacchae set against the backdrop of Bret Easton Ellis's The Rules of Attraction . . . forceful, cerebral and impeccably controlled . . . ferociously well-paced . . . remarkably powerful' The New York Times'Donna Tartt is an amazingly good writer. She's dense, she's allusive. She's a gorgeous storyteller' Stephen KingDonna Tartt was born in Greenwood, Mississippi, and is a graduate of Bennington College. She is the author of the novels The Secret History and The Little Friend, which have been translated into thirty languages, and The Goldfinch.

The Secret History

Irena

—Y si la belleza es terror —dijo Julian—, entonces, ¿qué es el deseo?

-Tú eres el nuevo neanias? -preguntó con sorna. El nuevo hombre joven. Respondí que sí. -Cubitum eamus? -Cómo? -Nada.

sofia mae

“There is nothing wrong with the love of Beauty. But Beauty—unless she is wed to something more meaningful—is always superficial.”

He had the far more remarkable talent of making himself invisible—in a room, in a car, a virtual ability to dematerialize at will—and perhaps this gift was only the converse of that one: the sudden concentration of his wandering molecules rendering his shadowy form solid, all at once, a metamorphosis startling to the viewer.

Nihil sub sole novum, I thought as I walked back down the hall to my room. Any action, in the fullness of time, sinks to nothingness.

His thoughts, at first, without any purpose , were wandering randomly, like his greyhound running in circles across the country

Sa pensée, sans but d’abord, vagabondait au hasard, comme sa levrette, qui faisait des cercles dans la campagne

"you amaze me," he said. "you think nothing exists if you can't see it."

“…morning light can make the most vulgar things tolerable.”

“how,” he [henry] said, “can i possibly make the dean of studies understand that there is a divinity in our midst?”

“Beauty is terror. Whatever we call beautiful, we quiver before it. ”

lemon

Any action, in the fullness of time, sinks to nothingness.

While I was washing my face, I began to cry. The tears mingled easily with the cold water, in the luminous, dripping crimson of my cupped fingers, and at first I wasn't aware that I was crying at all. The sobs were regular and emotionless, as mechanical as the dry heaves which had stopped only a moment earlier; there was no reason for them, they had nothing to do with me.

One likes to think there's something in it, that old platitude amor vincit omnia. But if I've learned one thing in my short sad life, it is that that particular platitude is a lie. Love doesn't conquer everything. And whoever thinks it does is a fool.

He had the far more remarkable talent of making himself invisible—in a room, in a car, a virtual ability to dematerialize at will—and perhaps this gift was only the converse of that one: the sudden concentration of his wandering molecules rendering his shadowy form solid, all at once, a metamorphosis startling to the viewer

Beatrix

My head was spinning and naturally I could give him no kind of coherent answer but I remember thinking dimly that it was sort of like the first time I got drunk, or slept with a girl; not quite what one expected, really, but once it happened one realized it couldn't be any other way. Neon lights: Motel 6, Dairy Queen. Colors so bright, they nearly broke my heart.

‘And now,' said Julian, when everything was quiet, ‘I hope we are all ready to leave the phenomenal world and enter into the sublime?’

White sky. Trees fading at the skyline, the mountains gone. My hands dangled from the cuffs of my jacket as if they weren't my own. I never got used to the way the horizon there could just erase itself and leave you marooned, adrift, in an incomplete dreamscape that was like a sketch for the world you knew — the outline of a single tree standing in for a grove, lamp-posts and chimneys floating up out of context before the surrounding canvas was filled in — an amnesia-land, a kind of skewed Heaven where the old landmarks were recognizable but spaced too far apart, and disarranged, and made terrible by the emptiness around them.

tianna

 I looked down at my hand and saw it was covered with blood, and worse than blood. Then Charles stepped forward and knelt at something at my feet, and I bent down, too, and saw that it was a man. He was dead. He was about forty years old and he had on a yellow plaid shirt-you know those woolen shirts they wear up here-and his neck was broken, and, unpleasant to say, his brains were all over his face. Really, I do not know how that happened. There was a dreadful mess. I was drenched in blood and there was even blood on my glasses.

I wondered what it would be like to fall and break my head open on one of those bright rocks: a wicked crack, a sudden limpness, then veins of red marbling the glassy water.

what the hell richard, this such an unhealthy obsession, it’s not even like or love 

The sun came suddenly from behind a rain cloud, flooding the room with glorious light that wavered on the walls like water. Camilla's face burst into glowing bloom. A terrible sweetnes boiled up in me. Everything, for a moment - miror, ceiling, floor - was unstable and radiant as a dream. I felt a fierce, nearly irresistible desire to seize Camilla by her bruised wrist, twist her arm behind her back until she cried out, throw her on my bed: strangle her, rape her, I don't know what. And then the cloud passed over the sun again, and the life went out of everything.

He hadn't seen it coming at all. He hadn't even understood. of the there wasn't time. Teetering back as if on the edge of the swimming pool: comic yodel, windmilling arms. Then the surprised nightmare of falling. Someone who didn't know there was such a thing in the world as Death; who couldn't believe it even when he saw it; had never dreamed it would come to him.

bunny and henry wouldve been a great toxic yaoi couple that id keep tabs on via instagram and other nosy friends. 

this book was good only cause i put my soap opera glasses on. they were a group of silly and fatally flawed people who did not give a fuck about each other most of the time which is why it was a good time! not as groundbreaking as people say but it doesnt have to be <3

bunny and henry wouldve been a great toxic yaoi couple that id keep tabs on via instagram and other nosy friends. 

this book was good only cause i put my soap opera glasses on. they were a group of silly and fatally flawed people who did not give a fuck about each other most of the time which is why it was a good time! not as groundbreaking as people say but it doesnt have to be <3

when someone asks me what my favourite horror story is i tell them the secret history. reading this, for the second time, at a stage where my mind is less impressionable and more able to see past the surface level presentation of characters, really made richard’s desire to be a part of the narrative, the inside joke of this extremely exclusive and closed off group, much more blatantly obvious. it’s in this blatant obviousness that has amplified my distate for richard on this reread, but donna tartt oh my the absolutely master crafter you are. i love your mind. it’s so ironic that tsh really subverts a lot of the tropes of d*rk academia when it essentially is treated as the bible and genesis of it. (i don’t have strong feelings for or against the subculture; i just wish i could find better character analysis that don’t romanticise the characters and the setting itself the same way richard does, i have the book to do that for me already.)

i think it’s common for a lot of fiction, especially well-written, to inspire a lot of “fix-its” per se? which may explain the general subculture of this book over at tumblr and there’s really nothing wrong with drawing inspiration from the “what-could-have-been” and falling in love with the setting that tartt really paints very very well.

things i liked most on this reread: the winter scene dragging on for practically an eternity because that is essentially what life is like for richard without the five students that he consider the exact point of why he even went to hampden, the five muses that fuelled his “morbid longing for the picturesque” as richard himself admitted is his fatal flaw. so absolutely funny to see even near the end that richard is, of course, still an outsider to all of this, even in what was the final confrontation in a sense, him getting shot and just being a bystander.

also loved how this time the thought that came to my mind was “wow these people are genuinely unlikeable” and loved how they were made likeable precisely because richard’s a heavily unreliable narrator and he paints his own intentions and motives on these really flawed and troubled people who would do anything to protect this little bubble they all live in (bubble that richard never really became part of, i’m happy to keep thinking). and the added layer that it’s precisely this desire of richard to project and project onto his muses that allowed him to be fed confusing narratives, be told vague answers and be kept at an arm’s length. we can question a lot of things, the bacchanal is different through every retelling but every retelling sort of has henry’s desire to protect the details laced in it, seen in francis’ hesitation. we actually don’t even know the whole story entirely even until the end, beyond what richard is told, and the information is twisted to elicit compliance and give him a false sense of solidarity from the very beginning henry decides to tell him the “bulk” of it (if it stands true as he says it).

also really loved the layering of the details of the bacchanal, it’s spiritual and soulful and enlightening and grandiose from henry, it’s fragmented from camilla, laced with what i believe to be exclusion mixed with shame (in the sense of “i pity you, you’re trying so hard to stand with us but you just are not part of us, you know?”), the news clipping itself (mutilated, dude.)

i was also seeing the bunny conflict from a different lens now, all the “reasons” that richard wanted us to believe justify the murder of bunny, even if he denies or admits so, also can be questioned. presenting all the negatives piling up and up to further push the reader towards sympathising with him and the others, to even think of rooting for them, for them to pull the climatic act off successfully, these things were much more visible on this read.

i think most people like the funeral scene for the grief that it portrays and really, through the parts following the farmer’s death and bunny’s death, i wanted to see them affected for the right reasons (right in the moral sense, by pulling them out from their closed off sphere and subjecting them to the moral norms of the general population) but i think that in itself is impossible and therefore very well displayed in donna tartt’s crafting of the narrative and of the character’s reactions, they’re so in their own heads and so wholly absorbed in the small world that belongs to the five of them, of classics and greek and noble causes and beauty and terror and violence that they’re (richard? about the other four?) physically incapable of admitting that they feel something more human than they want to let on, that there’s conflict and internal turmoil (because plainly, bunny’s their FRIEND) but also these supposedly human feelings are also just bits and pieces in them. i think actually that we don’t really understand how the characters really think about it, we see their physical responses to it but these have richard’s desire, to protect the world he was denied admission to once and only has these scraps of, the world he fought to wedge himself into just to belong, layered in and prescribing alternative meanings to the other four’s responses to bunny’s murder. they’re visibly troubled. but they’re also teenagers who fucked up and really don’t know how to go back and can only assign importance to the act to justify it.

on the last part of my ramble this reread also really solidified julian as just a concept. he’s the moral compass of henry and richard (making them parallels? essentially?). or rather the IDEA of julian is the moral compass of richard, he’s projecting wise sage and fatherly benevolence onto julian and praying for the reproach of julian to at least finally allow it to sink it that what they did was horrible and even wrong. julian’s “bravery” and “conviction” to “do what is necessary” is what guides henry too, and they were both let down when the projection on julian failed to deliver and they were left to think (fend) on their own. anyway love u donna tartt.

☀️

when someone asks me what my favourite horror story is i tell them the secret history. reading this, for the second time, at a stage where my mind is less impressionable and more able to see past the surface level presentation of characters, really made richard’s desire to be a part of the narrative, the inside joke of this extremely exclusive and closed off group, much more blatantly obvious. it’s in this blatant obviousness that has amplified my distate for richard on this reread, but donna tartt oh my the absolutely master crafter you are. i love your mind. it’s so ironic that tsh really subverts a lot of the tropes of d*rk academia when it essentially is treated as the bible and genesis of it. (i don’t have strong feelings for or against the subculture; i just wish i could find better character analysis that don’t romanticise the characters and the setting itself the same way richard does, i have the book to do that for me already.)

i think it’s common for a lot of fiction, especially well-written, to inspire a lot of “fix-its” per se? which may explain the general subculture of this book over at tumblr and there’s really nothing wrong with drawing inspiration from the “what-could-have-been” and falling in love with the setting that tartt really paints very very well.

things i liked most on this reread: the winter scene dragging on for practically an eternity because that is essentially what life is like for richard without the five students that he consider the exact point of why he even went to hampden, the five muses that fuelled his “morbid longing for the picturesque” as richard himself admitted is his fatal flaw. so absolutely funny to see even near the end that richard is, of course, still an outsider to all of this, even in what was the final confrontation in a sense, him getting shot and just being a bystander.

also loved how this time the thought that came to my mind was “wow these people are genuinely unlikeable” and loved how they were made likeable precisely because richard’s a heavily unreliable narrator and he paints his own intentions and motives on these really flawed and troubled people who would do anything to protect this little bubble they all live in (bubble that richard never really became part of, i’m happy to keep thinking). and the added layer that it’s precisely this desire of richard to project and project onto his muses that allowed him to be fed confusing narratives, be told vague answers and be kept at an arm’s length. we can question a lot of things, the bacchanal is different through every retelling but every retelling sort of has henry’s desire to protect the details laced in it, seen in francis’ hesitation. we actually don’t even know the whole story entirely even until the end, beyond what richard is told, and the information is twisted to elicit compliance and give him a false sense of solidarity from the very beginning henry decides to tell him the “bulk” of it (if it stands true as he says it).

also really loved the layering of the details of the bacchanal, it’s spiritual and soulful and enlightening and grandiose from henry, it’s fragmented from camilla, laced with what i believe to be exclusion mixed with shame (in the sense of “i pity you, you’re trying so hard to stand with us but you just are not part of us, you know?”), the news clipping itself (mutilated, dude.)

i was also seeing the bunny conflict from a different lens now, all the “reasons” that richard wanted us to believe justify the murder of bunny, even if he denies or admits so, also can be questioned. presenting all the negatives piling up and up to further push the reader towards sympathising with him and the others, to even think of rooting for them, for them to pull the climatic act off successfully, these things were much more visible on this read.

i think most people like the funeral scene for the grief that it portrays and really, through the parts following the farmer’s death and bunny’s death, i wanted to see them affected for the right reasons (right in the moral sense, by pulling them out from their closed off sphere and subjecting them to the moral norms of the general population) but i think that in itself is impossible and therefore very well displayed in donna tartt’s crafting of the narrative and of the character’s reactions, they’re so in their own heads and so wholly absorbed in the small world that belongs to the five of them, of classics and greek and noble causes and beauty and terror and violence that they’re (richard? about the other four?) physically incapable of admitting that they feel something more human than they want to let on, that there’s conflict and internal turmoil (because plainly, bunny’s their FRIEND) but also these supposedly human feelings are also just bits and pieces in them. i think actually that we don’t really understand how the characters really think about it, we see their physical responses to it but these have richard’s desire, to protect the world he was denied admission to once and only has these scraps of, the world he fought to wedge himself into just to belong, layered in and prescribing alternative meanings to the other four’s responses to bunny’s murder. they’re visibly troubled. but they’re also teenagers who fucked up and really don’t know how to go back and can only assign importance to the act to justify it.

on the last part of my ramble this reread also really solidified julian as just a concept. he’s the moral compass of henry and richard (making them parallels? essentially?). or rather the IDEA of julian is the moral compass of richard, he’s projecting wise sage and fatherly benevolence onto julian and praying for the reproach of julian to at least finally allow it to sink it that what they did was horrible and even wrong. julian’s “bravery” and “conviction” to “do what is necessary” is what guides henry too, and they were both let down when the projection on julian failed to deliver and they were left to think (fend) on their own. anyway love u donna tartt.

I LOVED the first half, I loved all of the philosophical parts, hearing about them learning about classics and Greek, seeing their friendship develop because of this shared education. But tell me why I got through hundreds of pages to find out I'm reading about incest. That is just not something that makes me want to read any further, but by then it was too late to stop. 

I also found myself getting bored about 3/4 of the way in because it got to be less and less about learning Greek and classics, and it got less philosophical, which is why I liked the book in the beginning. 

Montana Langille

I LOVED the first half, I loved all of the philosophical parts, hearing about them learning about classics and Greek, seeing their friendship develop because of this shared education. But tell me why I got through hundreds of pages to find out I'm reading about incest. That is just not something that makes me want to read any further, but by then it was too late to stop. 

I also found myself getting bored about 3/4 of the way in because it got to be less and less about learning Greek and classics, and it got less philosophical, which is why I liked the book in the beginning. 

Valid act when your friend is homophobic 

Claire Maguet

Introduit dans le cercle privilégié d'une université du Vermont, un jeune boursier californien intègre peu à peu un petit groupe d'étudiants de la grande bourgeoisie. Il découvre un monde insoupçonné de luxe, d'arrogance intellectuelle et de sophistication, en même temps que l'alcool, la drogue et d'étranges pratiques sataniques. Très vite, il pressent qu'on lui cache quelque chose de terrible et d'inavouable, un meurtre sauvage et gratuit qui l'entraîne, lui et ses camarades, dans un abîme de chantage, de trahison et de cruauté.

Le maître des illusions

Trop tard, m’aurais surement plus captivée ado, bien que le côté academia m’aurait nécessairement refroidi. 

Diane Blache

Raté le train pour celui-ci. 

Trop tard, m’aurais surement plus captivée ado, bien que le côté academia m’aurait nécessairement refroidi. 

very bret easton ellis, enjoyed living in this world for a little while

jacq bridge

Ayesha

Donna Tartt, winner of the 2014 Pulitzer Prize for her most recent novel, The Goldfinch, established herself as a major talent with The Secret History, which has become a contemporary classic. Under the influence of their charismatic classics professor, a group of clever, eccentric misfits at an elite New England college discover a way of thinking and living that is a world away from the humdrum existence of their contemporaries. But when they go beyond the boundaries of normal morality their lives are changed profoundly and forever, and they discover how hard it can be to truly live and how easy it is to kill.

“It is only later, in solitude, in memory, that the realization dawns: when the ashes are cold; when the mourners have departed; when one looks around and finds oneself—quite to one’s surprise—in an entirely different world.” / “What is unthinkable is undoable.”

shen

Richard Papen, a relatively impoverished student at a New England college, falls in with an exclusive clique of rich, worldly Greek scholars and soon learns the dreadful secret that keeps them together. Reader's Guide included. Reprint. 50,000 first printing.

Oh God.. idk how to describe this book but first of all, holy shit.

It's like.. Super thrilling from the very start until the end. The characters.. are all insane that I realised Bunny was the only sane character among those Greek kids. And also Richard.. Poor you but that serves you right, no? Poor him for wasting his college life with those psychopath gang instead of socialising with the other students. And Henry!!!!!! What the hell!!!!! But on the top of that, I think Julian held the most responsibility of this matter because why did he isolated that study group from other students? I think they got brainwashed by him(?) I agree when Henry said he's a coward and couldn't stand his consequences of his action.

But anyways, it's gonna be one of my best read in 2025!

Oh God.. idk how to describe this book but first of all, holy shit.

It's like.. Super thrilling from the very start until the end. The characters.. are all insane that I realised Bunny was the only sane character among those Greek kids. And also Richard.. Poor you but that serves you right, no? Poor him for wasting his college life with those psychopath gang instead of socialising with the other students. And Henry!!!!!! What the hell!!!!! But on the top of that, I think Julian held the most responsibility of this matter because why did he isolated that study group from other students? I think they got brainwashed by him(?) I agree when Henry said he's a coward and couldn't stand his consequences of his action.

But anyways, it's gonna be one of my best read in 2025!

I was hooked upon first read, it took me about a week to finish. I would definitely read again, the suspense was exhilarating. The ending sucked but made the most sense. such complex characters, you don’t know if it’s even possible to love them or hate them. 

lindura

Miles

this was such a ride and i regret none of it.

Angie

I’ve got to lay my cards on the table here: I did not like this book. I tried so hard to, and I really wanted to, but it fell short for me. This is odd; I love everything that it represents- the murder, the references to Greek and Latin (I’m a sucker for anything revolving around Latin) but I just found this to be, well… dry. It’s so boring. The pace is so painfully slow. Not to mention the fact that I hated every single one of the characters, which, yes, I get that that’s the point, but come on Donna, at least make the plot interesting if you can’t invest in the characters! So anyway, I’m a Secret History hater. It’s a beautifully written book, but it wasn’t my cup of tea. Maybe I’ll try again in a couple of years.

Grace Stanger

The story seemed to drag a lot of the time - it felt odd that the climax scene happened and there was still almost a full other book after that. It took a long time to get into the story as there was entirely too much Greek specific talk and all of the characters were unlikeable yet also underdeveloped. 

Paige Paul

i loved it. i think it’s really good but it’s quite a long book. i would totally recommend this.

Olivia

To say I'm impressed would be a terrible understatement. This is the best book I've read yet. It's so well written, deep and complex. I still have no idea what actually happened during the bacchanal or which characters I should and shouldn't like. I have to say that i was obsessed with Henry for most of the story but now i don't know how i feel about him. The real story is in-between the lines. I love how each character has a purpose and their own story. Additionally, I loved the fact that Richard is an unreliable narrator, it made the story much more interesting. As the story progressed, the line between Richard's and my own feelings started to blur. In the end I didn't know whether it was him or I who romanticised the characters. It's so layered and it is my opinion that you can't understand the essence of it after the first reading. I am definitely going to re-read this book because it was that good. Needless to say it's the epitome of dark academia and if you know me, you know i love dark academia. 10/10 donna tartt, the woman you are

i did not expect that as an ending wtf. the characters in this book are so complex and i think that’s why i enjoyed reading it. lowkey reminded me of salt burn in the beginning. i need to watch a video analysis ASAP.

Luoyi

Santiago Alejandro Crime

donna tartt i wish i could enter your mind

I really wanted to read this by relating on a personal level but failed because what the fuck

The Secret History

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